Personal Names in Ancient Anatolia

Robert Parker

Abstract

It has been said that the study of names is a ‘paradigm case of the convergence of disciplines, where the history of language meets social history’. This volume illustrates that truth in relation to a privileged area of investigation, ancient Anatolia: the evidence from ancient Anatolia has exceptional chronological depth, reaching back to the second millennium BC; under the Roman empire it acquires exceptional density; and it has a complexity which reflects the arrival of many waves of immigrants (Persians, Greeks, Thracians, Galatians, Jews, Romans) in a region that was already culturally di ... More

It has been said that the study of names is a ‘paradigm case of the convergence of disciplines, where the history of language meets social history’. This volume illustrates that truth in relation to a privileged area of investigation, ancient Anatolia: the evidence from ancient Anatolia has exceptional chronological depth, reaching back to the second millennium BC; under the Roman empire it acquires exceptional density; and it has a complexity which reflects the arrival of many waves of immigrants (Persians, Greeks, Thracians, Galatians, Jews, Romans) in a region that was already culturally diverse. Names are often the only clue to the origins and history of a particular community. At a collective level, striking shifts in time within one community from one naming tradition to another most commonly attest cultural influence, occasionally actual population movement. But the interaction between different groups is such that it is often unsafe to infer an individual’s ethnic origin from name alone. Anatolian evidence also richly illustrates the psychology of naming, whether the Ionian taste for seemingly derogatory names deriving from the nursery, the fascination with luxury reflected in names such as Sardonyx and Nard, or the growing adoption by Greek civic elites of ‘second names’. Published exactly fifty years after Louis Robert’s Noms indigènes dans l’Asie Mineure gréco-romaine, this volume builds on and goes beyond that classic work, while remaining true to its guiding principle that ‘tout dépend des régions et des époques’.